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This workshop, planned as a theme session at the 41st annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), is intended to bring together scholars interested in various aspects of the structure of impersonal constructions, both in individual languages and cross-linguistically. Contributions dealing with less studied languages are particularly welcome.

This is a call for papers for a workshop on Impersonal constructions: a cross-linguistic perspective that we plan to organize within the next annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), to be held in Forlì, Italy, September 17-20, 2008 (http://sle2008.sitlec.unibo.it).

Since SLE policy for workshops and theme sessions requires us to submit the proposal to the SLE program committee before February 15, 2008, we ask the prospective contributors to send us the title of their contribution and a very short abstract no later than 8th of February, 2008. We will ask for longer abstracts once we have negotiated with the conference organizers the number of slots available. Abstracts should be sent to both organizers to the following e-mail addresses:

a.siewierskalancaster.ac.uk andrej_malchukoveva.mpg.de

The notification of acceptance of an abstract for the workshop is 28th of February. The final notification of acceptance on the part of the SLE committee is the 31st of May 2008. If the theme session is accepted it is our intention to publish a selection of the papers with an international publisher.

Anna Siewierska and Andrej Malchukov

Workshop Topic

Impersonal Constructions: a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Impersonal constructions (such as Latin Me pudet lit. 'me shames', German Mich friert lit. 'me freezes', or Russian Svetaet 'It dawns') have been a traditional topic of research in Indo-European studies (see, e.g., Seefranz-Montag 1984; Lambert 1998; Bauer 2000). Yet this research with a few exceptions has not been extended cross-linguistically. There seem to be several, different reasons for this all of which cause problems for the cross-linguistic identification of impersonal constructions. The first reason relates to the term impersonal, which has remained controversial and is understood in a variety of different ways by different authors: as pertaining to constructions lacking a subject; as embracing constructions lacking a lexical subject (this allows for treating constructions like 'It dawns' as impersonal); as covering constructions featuring subjects with generic or arbitrary reference rather than definite reference. These uses of the term impersonal are not unrelated though. We will define impersonal constructions broadly as constructions lacking a referential subject, which is consistent with the traditional usage of the term impersonal. The second reason for the lack of cross-linguistic studies of impersonals is that impersonal constructions are rather heterogeneous in terms of the verb types involved. As repeatedly noted in the literature, among the verb types that most commonly pattern impersonally are weather-verbs, psych verbs, as well as verbs used in presentational constructions. Yet, in spite of this heterogeneity, these constructions also show an overlap, which justifies their joint consideration (e.g., the same predicates may be involved in weather constructions and psych predicates: cf. German: Es friert 'It is cold' and Mich friert lit. 'me freezes'). Another reason for the relative neglect of impersonals in typological investigations is that, impersonal verbs can be either basic or derived (impersonal passives; cf. the impersonal participles in -no/-to in Polish; Siewierska 1984). Yet, again both types show a significant overlap: in fact, Givón (2001) regards impersonal construction such as Man sagt in German as a kind of impersonal passive (cf. Khrakovky 1974). Finally, the term impersonal is based on the concept of subject, which may be not readily applicable to languages of different alignment (e.g., ergative languages). However, as noted by Lazard (1998 et passim), similar phenomena can be attested in ergative languages with respect to encoding of the P argument, a construction called ''anti-impersonal''. Furthermore, the role of impersonal constructions in the rise of different alignment types has been recently recognized (see, e.g., contributions by Donohue, Mithun, Malchukov to Donohue & Wichmann (eds.) 2008 on the rise of the active-stative languages). The workshop is intended to bring together scholars interested in various aspects of the structure of impersonal constructions, both in individual languages and cross-linguistically. The discussion of theoretical issues will be appreciated to the extent that it helps to elucidate the empirical data. The topics to be addressed include but are not limited to: - impersonal constructions in individual languages (contributions dealing with less studied languages are particularly welcome) - lexical properties of the constructions (i.e., what types of predicates pattern impersonally) - syntactic properties of these constructions (i.e., does any argument display subject properties) - morphological properties (basic and derived impersonal verbs (impersonal passives) - borderline cases/extensions of impersonal uses (cf. Siewierska 2004 on the impersonal uses of personal pronouns, and personal uses of impersonal pronouns) - cross-linguistic and diachronic studies of impersonal constructions

In July of 2006 and 2007 took place, in FCSH-UNL, the First and the Second Linguistic Sharing Forum, organized by the Núcleo de Jovens Investigadores (Young Investigators), which gathers all the MA students, MA, PhD students and recently PhDs of the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CLUNL). http://clunl.onlinetrace.com/PT/?id=787&mid=7 For the Terceiro Fórum de Partilha Linguística/ Third Linguistic Sharing Forum, CLUNL's Young Investigators invite their fellows of all Portuguese and foreign Universities, whose works are related with studies about languages and/or language (Linguistic, Language Sciences, Language Philosophy, Literature, Anthropology, Sociology,...), to participate in this multidisciplinary conference, presenting their investigation. The Terceiro Fórum de Partilha Linguística / Third Linguistic Sharing Forum will take place:

All those interested in the participation of the Terceiro Fórum de Partilha Linguística/ Third Linguistic Sharing Forum ought to submit their proposals according with the following calendar and regulation:

Calendar April 14th of 2008 - last day for inscription and abstract sending May 15th of 2008 - information of the selected proposals

Regulation 1. Works should be presentations or posters.

2. Presentations should be in Portuguese or in English.

3. Presentations should not overtake 20 minutes, followed of a 10 minutes debate.

4. All interested colleagues should send their Work Presentation Proposal to Núcleo de Jovens Investigadores's e-mail: jiclunlfcsh.unl.pt.

6. The presentation proposals should be composed by: Presentation title without author(s) name(s) Abstract (in Portuguese or English) - word number, 250 max. - Times New Roman font, 12 font size - single line spacing - 2,5 cm left and right indentation and 3 cm before and after spacing

7. The abstracts should be sent in Word and be named fpl (Fórum de Partilha Linguística) followed by author(s)'s initials (example: Ana Silva = fplas.doc).

8. All Presentation proposals will be evaluated by a reading committee.

9. The selected abstracts will be reproduced in the official program of the 3° Fórum de Partilha Linguística / 3rd Linguistic Sharing Forum.

The Second Linguistic Sharing Forum participants were invited to present their works for publication in CLUNL's Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies, after judgement of a reading committee appointed by the magazine and/or by the Núcleo de Jovens Investigadores.

The Núcleo de Jovens Investigadores will publish the Actas do Terceiro Fórum de Partilha Linguística on-line, with the articles of the interested colleagues.

To enlighten any doubts or obtain additional information, do not hesitate to contact conference organization: